


Everlasting bonds

by FayH2



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:07:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28232901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FayH2/pseuds/FayH2
Summary: How do you heal a tethered bond and build upon it?In some places, broken pottery is put back together with gold to show that even that which is broken can be bonded into a stronger, more beautiful piece of art.After the war for the dawn, Jon picks up the broken pieces of Arya’s life and fills them with all the things that made her long for him above everyone else from the day she left for King’s Landing to now.
Relationships: (past), Arya Stark/Gendry Waters, Jon Snow/Arya Stark
Comments: 39
Kudos: 87





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A reader asked for a one shot of Jon/Arya in the winter suns universe. I couldn’t think of anything, well I could but I hit writer’s block 😝, so here’s a short story (I seem incapable of one shots lol but this will be around 4/5 chapters) of our two navigating a new world.

War had changed them all. Gone was his sister Sansa who dreamt of gallant knights and handsome princes. In her place was a lady as cold as winter itself whose only cares in the world were her family, and her home. Bran, King in the North, had seen horrors beyond the wall and Rickon was more wildling than prince. But Arya’s change broke his heart most. Once, she used to tell him everything. Now, he knew nothing about her but the snippets she shared. She travelled to Braavos during the war, she met Jeyne Poole there and returned home when she heard he lived. “I wanted to see for myself,” she confessed. 

Jon could scarcely see a thing. Within minutes of the downpour beginning, his furs were soaked limp and his skin wet. Ghost fared no better but they had to find her. He should have seen this coming. Once, he’d known her well. 

The girl who returned to him was a stranger. His little sister wore her feelings on her face. He knew what every gesture meant. Chewing her lip was a sign of her thinking. She bit her lip, on the other hand, when she was scared or wanted to cry. She could not lie to save her life either. Not to Jon anyway, not that she tried, but he knew when she lied to others. The gnawing on her lip gave her away. 

Where others would run, Arya would stand and fight. The memory made him smile. Once, when they were children, Jon had covered himself in flour and hid in the crypts. In on the prank, Robb led their little siblings down to the crypts where Jon the ghost awaited them. When he jumped out, Sansa ran, Bran screamed and Arya punched him straight in the chest. “You stupid,” she told him, “you scared the baby,” but Jon and Robb just laughed and laughed, and soon Bran and Arya were laughing too. But even in that moment, while she was telling the ghost off, Jon saw her holding her hands in fists to fortify herself. She feared but she would not show it. 

The girl who returned to him with an army of wolves and a mish-mash of riverlords, outlaws and smallfolk at her back was a stranger. With hair too short for him to muss, she rarely spoke to any of them. His Arya had laughed with him when no one else could make him smile, she climbed and played with Bran, taught Rickon how to play monsters and maidens and once, when they were really little, she used to trail after Sansa too. Now, she watched each of them from the shadows. The blacksmith was rarely far from her side. 

Her feelings were hidden behind a mask he could not remove no matter how hard he tried.

Only two things hadn’t changed about her. Even as a stranger, Arya, his little sister, sought him out at night in the early days, before Dany came north. She’d sneak into his bed sometimes as if they were still children. “Don’t turn me away,” she pleaded that first night. As if he would...or even could. He’d been waiting for her return for so many years. Even when speech between them was hard, he had those nights that she stole into his bed to look forward to. She’d curve herself around his body, her cold feet still seeking warmth in him. He didn’t mind it when they were children. He didn’t mind it now either. In the midst of preparing for the end of the world, being touted as a figure of legend by the red priestess, trying to feed a north that faced starvation in winter, arguments about who should lead the north and learning that he had never been the son of Eddard Stark, there was nothing he found more comfort in than the little sister who stayed true to them even if neither of them was the person they left behind. 

That first night she silently traced the reminders of his death across his chest. Teary eyed, “But you’re still the same,” she whispered. “You still remember me.”

“Of course,” he smiled, trying to muss the short growth on her head. “I would never forget you.” Even in the moment death came to him, the last thing he remembered was a memory of her. Of them. 

“I didn’t think you would still be you. Beric forgot who he was and...the other person.” She gulped. “She remembered only some things. She...wasn’t the same.”

He asked her who that was but it was another secret that lay between them, another thing she refused to talk about…just as she refused to mention what she had been doing in Braavos when she came across Ser Justin Massey and Jeyne Poole. 

The second thing that hadn’t changed, the thing he should have foreseen, was that Arya hid away when she felt alone and upset. Once, she used to run to him. He had been the one who dried her tears but now she didn’t even give him that. Ever since her blacksmith fell, she withdrew even further from them all. 

Jon envied Ser Gendry of the Hollow Hill for his closeness to Arya, Jon’s little sister. In the long two years since their reunion, he had only seen Arya smile a handful of times. So rare were her smiles he could not help but count them when they graced her face. The first was the day she returned home and was reunited with her family. The second was the day Bran was crowned King in the North. She held Jon’s hand that day when he abdicated in favour of Robb’s true heir and the third time he saw her smile, she was laughing freely with the blacksmith. The type of laughing that made tears flow from her eyes and had her bending over, holding her belly trying to catch her breath. The last time Jon had heard her laugh, her laughter warmed him from Winterfell to the Wall. But hearing her gift her laughter to Ser Gendry was as painful as the knives to his chest. Someone else had made her laugh when he could not. 

Then the war for the living started in earnest, old loyalties fell by the wayside. Dany came north with her armies and her dragons. Northman fought beside wildling and riverlord with the nobility of the crownlands and Baratheon beside Targaryen. The Wall fell, so did Winterfell and every keep down The Trident until humanity made its final stand at Harrenhal. And won. At too great a cost. Everyone lost someone. Dany lost a dragon and half her armies. Rickon lost the woman who became his mother, Sansa her Clegane sword, Bran lost his friend, Jojen Reed, Jon, his brothers. Pyp fell with the Wall, Edd at Winterfell, Grenn on The Trident and finally, Tormund at Harrenhal. And Arya lost her blacksmith, the father of the child growing in her belly. 

Jon couldn’t picture his little sister in Ramsay Bolton’s bed. He knew she would kill him before she let him touch her. 

It wasn’t so hard to imagine her in the blacksmith’s bed though. Or the blacksmith in hers. Where Jon saw one, the other was not far behind. And he hated the bastard knight for it. Ser Gendry had replaced him in her life. That, he found, hurt more than death itself. 

Gendry fell moments before the Green Men’s arrival, mere days before the end of the war. Arya’s heart wrenching scream reached Jon on dragon back and for a moment he thought his life over. He thought he’d lost her before he truly had a chance to reunite with her. 

Then came the funerals. Huge pyres were built for all who fell. Arya took Gendry’s body and burnt it herself somewhere deep in Harrenhal’s godswood. Then she fell sick. 

When Sansa told him the news, that Arya, his little sister, was with child, his heart could have stopped. It might have done. 

“We need to find a trustworthy lord, one loyal to House Stark, to claim them both,” he heard her say when his faculties began to return.

“I will do it,” Jon blurted, his lips moving of their own accord. 

Sansa regarded him incredulously. “She’s your sister, Jon.”

“She’s my cousin,” he reminded her. “And I would not leave her in the care of another.” 

Sansa appraised him with calculating eyes that thought only of the continuance of House Stark after a war that decimated Westeros. Arya’s child would be the first of a new generation of Starks. 

“What of your queen?” she asked, arching a fine brow. At that moment, nothing mattered more than protecting Arya’s name and more so the child she carried. Even with Ned Stark as a father, Jon knew the stain bastards carried all too well. He would not let Arya’s child suffer the same. When he explained all that to Sansa she gave him a graceful, if calculating smile. War had changed them all, Sansa in more ways than one. He knew what she was thinking but paid it no mind.He needed to find Arya. Arya was more important than the game of thrones.

He found her in the forge running her hands across the smithy’s anvil, stroking the hammer and rubbing a thumb over the edge of the tongs. Grief ate away at her until she was a shadow of the shadow of the sister that returned to him.

He made no noise but she sensed him all the same. “I was ten, Gendry was no more than four-and-ten maybe younger,” she told him unprompted when he stepped in. “We never managed to learn how old he was and in any case he was always as big as an aurochs...a bull if ever I saw one.” She smiled sadly to herself. The fourth smile he’d seen brighten her face. “We were making our way to Winterfell, well I was. Gendry was bound for the Wall. I was disguised as a boy. I called myself Arry. Yoren was bringing us north, a friend of Uncle Benjen’s.” 

Jon remembered the wandering crow. 

“The gold cloaks came after us on the kingsroad once we left the city. I thought they were searching for me. They were when I was in King’s Landing.” She returned her hands to the anvil. 

“I was about to give myself up. I didn’t want anyone else dying for me. Then they said that it was Gendry they were looking for. Neither of us knew why but he knew I was a girl.” She turned away from the forge for a moment to look at him. “He never told anyone you know? Not even me, not until the gold cloaks came looking and he wanted to know if they wanted me because I was a girl.” 

Then she turned back away from him, vulnerability returning to her voice. “They came back and they killed everyone but those of us who managed to escape the carnage through a tunnel. Then Gendry was caught by The Mountain and his men. I couldn’t let them hurt him so I tried to free him.” Arya laughed mirthlessly. “Of course, I was caught and half-marched to death. To here,” she motioned a hand around in the air at the castle surrounding them.

The blood in Jon’s veins turned to ice. When he was ten, he and Robb were playing with wooden swords. Arya at that age, was facing the most unimaginable of horrors. He stood there dumbfounded. This was more than she had ever volunteered since her return. She seldom spoke of what happened to her after Father…Lord Eddard’s death. 

“Gendry was an armourer’s apprentice,” she continued. “So they put him in the forge here. When he was here, the world disappeared. Lannister, Bolton, even Stark were all just names to him. Here, it was just him and the song he made when steel hit steel. I’d watch him from up there.” Arya pointed up at a small hole in the roof with a small smile. The fifth. “He wanted to return to his trade, you know? When the war was over, he wanted his own shop, a place to call his own.” She pulled away her hand from the worktop at once, as if burnt. 

“He didn’t get a chance to do any of that. If he had never met me, would he be alive?” She looked at him for answers then, the same way she always did when they were children. 

This time he had no answers. None for a surety anyway so he did what came most naturally. He wrapped his arms around her and tucked her head under his chin. “I’m sorry,” he whispered and tightened his hold, kissing her hair. “Mayhaps knowing you kept him alive much longer. He might have fallen with the Wall if he had never met you.” Jon moved his hand to her belly. “If you had never met, we wouldn’t have this little one…” 

And just like that, the moment was gone. Arya pulled away from him. “She told you.” It was not a question. Her face turned to a snarl. “She had no right! She tries to control everything...know everything!”

“Arya…”he said softly, tucking a stray hair behind her ear. “She only told me. Wouldn’t you tell me?”

A storm brewed in her eyes. Then, for the first time since their reunion, she chewed her lip. “I would.”

“So, what’s the issue, little sister? It doesn’t matter who told me. What matters is that I know...It’s my job to protect you.”

“I haven’t needed anyone to protect me in a long time.”

“You weren’t with child then.” He took a hold of her hands. “And I wasn’t with you.” 

So he sat in that forge with Arya and as she spoke, telling him bits of her life, he saw glimpses of his little sister. She spoke of her time on the run with Gendry, and how she was angry at him when he chose knighthood over her. Jon too felt her ire. Not only had Gendry put a bastard in her belly, he left her, when she was barely eleven. 

She then began to tell him about how for a long time she thought Gendry had abandoned her, only for the two of them to reunite in the riverlands on her return. She stopped her story there. When he asked how she forgave him, she gnawed at her lip. He knew whatever came next would be a lie and it was. Arya shrugged her shoulders and said she just did. 

Once, she had never lied to him. 

“What will you do?” he asked. 

For that moment she looked like his Arya with her arched, questioning, brow and scrunched nose. “What do you mean?” 

“The baby will need a father.”

She looked away from him. “Gendry is dead.”

“You will have to marry...”

Arya all but jumped up to her feet. “If Sansa thinks she can use this-“

Jon followed her up and cupped his hands around her face. “It wasn’t Sansa’s idea. It was mine.”

She flinched involuntarily from him with tears flowing from eyes that burnt with betrayal. 

“We will all love this child. I already do,” he told her, returning her into his arms. “But the world will not be so kind, Arya. It wasn’t so kind to me. Sansa is not wrong either. You will need a name to give the child-“

“Stark. I am a Stark.”

“You are, little sister so was fa- Lord Eddard, and _I_ was still a Snow.” There were many things Jon wished to speak to Eddard Stark about, none more so than why he allowed him to go to the Wall. The red woman would speak of prophecy, Dany would talk of the last of their house saving the world but Jon wanted little more than to be a Stark. “I wouldn’t wish that on any child,” he said instead. “I didn’t know Gendry very well, Arya, but I doubt he would either.”

“They don’t care about bastards across the sea.”

Jon could taste the saliva thicken in his throat. “You would leave?”

“I won’t marry some lord I don’t know just to appease Sansa’s sensibilities.” she carped acidly. “Or-“

“You wouldn’t marry a stranger,” Jon interjected. “I would be the babe’s father.”

She studied him for seconds that might have felt like days. “You are my brother.”

“I am your cousin so far as the rest of the world is concerned. I will give the babe my name. We will raise it together.” He smiled. “Just as we were raised. You won’t have to marry someone you don’t know. We don’t even have to be a husband and wife in truth. We will do it for the little one and-“

“What about the queen?” she asked him in a small voice. 

“You,” he said, “and this,” he placed his hand back down to her belly. “Are more important to me than anyone in the world.”

“But you love her.”

Like Stannis, Dany answered the call of the Night’s Watch. A beautiful queen, a formidable conqueror, and a broken girl, Daenerys Targaryen came north touted as her father’s daughter. The girl Jon got to know was as different from the stories he heard as night from day. Before she came north, they heard of a queen with dragons and barbarians at her back. They heard she burnt down a city to usurp her nephew - one _she_ named usurper. 

Their first meeting was far from amiable. Dany declared him another liar. “Do you expect me to believe you are another lost son of my brother?” she mocked him. “I am the slayer of lies.”

She threatened to have him burnt for his lies but when her dragons took to him she began to relent. 

Months later, after the fall of the Wall, he got to know the girl behind the queen. The one who understood that hiding behind the words of her house...their house, only soured everything she had fought for - home, duty, family - as well as all she was proclaimed to be - saviour most of all.

“I didn’t know about the wildfire,” she confessed to him one night. “I was angry. I wanted the throne, it’s true,” she said. “But I didn’t intend to burn the city. I wanted to save them from a liar. I wanted to be a good queen.” But her father it seemed, from beyond the grave, burnt that hope to cinders. The dragon queen was derided from Dorne to the Wall for the burning of the city her ancestor founded. Yet, when it mattered most, she answered the call. It didn’t take long after her arrival north for things to warm between her and Jon until they sought comfort and solace in each other’s arms. Once the war for the dawn was over, her advisors spoke of a marriage between them as a means of uniting their claims and cleansing her image in Westeros. _As if saving us all wasn’t enough._

“I loved you first, little sister,” he quipped truthfully in reply to Arya and kissed her brow. He cared deeply for Dany. Perhaps he could even call it love but the choice he had to make now felt like no choice at all. Reason seemed to escape him when it came to her. He’d learnt that at the cost of his own lifesblood. Yet, he found as he stroked her hair, he would gladly give up all for her again. 

“It was always the two of us remember? Before the wars and before we left home. You will not marry another and I will not lose you again. This is the only way of keeping us all together.”

“The queen won’t allow it,” she warned. “You marrying would bring together both your claims and-“

“I will give it up-“

“No!” she shouted, horrified. “It’s all you ever wanted before.”

 _I wanted Winterfell,_ he remembered thinking. _I wanted to be a Stark. I wanted my family. I wanted you to return home, to me._

“Why?” she hesitated. 

“Why, What?”

“Why would you do this?”

Jon just smiled and kissed her brow again. Some decisions were no decisions at all. They came as naturally as breathing itself. 

The next morning, Sansa burst into his room. Arya was gone. The scroll in Sansa’s hand had contained words addressed to him. A few remained etched in his mind. “ _Jon, you were the only home I ever had and the one I longed for above all else. You were the only person who always put my needs before theirs. I loved you for it, I still do. After all, here you are, doing it again. This time though, I won’t let you. You want to help the little sister you knew but you would sacrifice your happiness not for her but the person who killed her. I am not the Arya you remember, Jon. I won’t let you give up all you have for me. I survived by myself before, I can do so again. I could start again somewhere else. Somewhere no one knows_ ~~_me_~~ _us. I will be alright. I promise. I already told Sansa but I’ll tell you too. Kiss Bran and Rickon for me and be happy. Your smile was always my favourite thing.”_

When it wasn’t raining so heavily, the Riverlands were gentle enough. They were made up of rolling hills and terraced fields interspersed with meadows and woodlands and little valleys where willows crowded close to slow shallow streams beyond which farmland gave way to forest. With last night’s torrent now down to a drizzle, Jon could see the land better with the rising sun.

They sent search parties ahead to find her. Jon took only Ghost with him. His wolf knew his sister’s scent best and Jon _had_ to be the one to find her. He didn’t think she’d listen to anyone else. That was not to say that he was sure she’d listen to him either. His little sister was inside the girl that returned but Arya had buried her so deep inside her that even Jon knew not how to reach her. All he had was hope that he would. He could not bear to lose her, not again, not after the pain of their long separation and definitely not now that she was with child. 

Ghost stopped, his tail alert, and then he was off, keeping his snout on the ground, advancing quickly. He’d picked up a scent and Jon’s guts twisted in apprehension. 

They found her huddling with Nymeria, clothes soaked, teeth chattering. He expected her to shout at him. Arya always hid her fear behind bluster but he realised when she looked up at him that she had been crying and had this clearing not been so quiet, he would have missed her mumble, “You should have left me to fend for myself. The kinslayer is cursed. Gendry died because I’m cursed. He used to say he didn’t care, that he didn’t believe I was a kinslayer. That I couldn’t be cursed for what I did. But he died anyway because of me. I can’t let you die.” Her voice was far too low, far too breathless, revealing just how scared she was. 

“Kinslayer?” Jon asked, kneeling. 

“I killed my mother,” she whispered, hugging her knees to her chest. “I can’t let the curse get to you.” 


	2. Chapter 2

Arya stoked the fire in their one-room cabin. Jon had a proper stone hearth built to keep her warm and to stop the smoke from hanging in the air and stinging her eyes. It was the only thing he had splurged on. Theirs was a small home. The first to be built in their new settlement. The war had decimated the north but the inhabited fortresses bore the biggest brunt. Sea Dragon Point was untouched by those horrors. The problem was that it had laid bare for centuries which made their task as hard as everyone else who had to rebuild.

They began building the settlement high into the mountains, in the ruins of the ancient strongholds of the First Men. The land was fertile, full of hills and bogs and rich in wildlife. When Arya wasn’t pretending to be a lord’s lady, she enjoyed spotting the otters in the lakes beside their home. Sometimes, Jon took her along the shore to hunt for the clams she craved so much these days. He would fish for salmon there too - the lifeblood of their settlement. 

There, they’d try to spot sea dragons and watch the colonies of seals. They reminded her of her friend Tagannaro, the cutpurse, and his pet, and distraction, Casso the King of Seals. Memories of them meant memories of Cat of the Canals - the most content Arya had been since the day her father died. Memories of Cat of the Canals were one of the only parts of her life less sullied, but not untouched, by her kinslaying. Memories of Winterfell meant memories of the mother she killed, the father she no doubt disappointed and the siblings she deprived of a mother. 

The guilt is why they settled so far from their family. Jon was the only person who knew what she’d done. The only person other than Gendry. 

Gendry found her moments after Needle pierced her mother’s heart. Her mother had just hanged a boy younger than Bran for no crime other than the name of his house. Arya was riding for the stables when she saw the boy’s body flailing in the wind in the woods beside the inn. Lady Stoneheart dismissed her when Arya confronted her. “This isn’t the justice Father taught us,” Arya remembered shouting. “What crime had the boy committed?”

“His grandfather-“ she rasped. She pressed her hand against the gaping slit across her neck. 

“I asked what crime the boy committed,” Arya repeated. 

Lady Stoneheart grabbed her by the neck and began strangling her. “They killed your brother,” she croaked in a whisper. “What was his crime? What was mine? I will feed them all to the crows as they did us. No one,” she muttered, breath putrid, “will stop me.” 

Approaching her last breaths, seeing stars, Arya withdrew Needle from her side, twisted her hold and pushed up. Only black blood flowed out of her mother’s heart and over her deathly white hand.

Gendry found her then. She stood in a daze, Needle in hand, confused. He took the sword, rolled the body and pierced Needle through Lady Stoneheart’s back. The rest of The Brotherhood appeared then, saw the tiny sword in his hand and began to rush at him. Harwin stood in front of Arya and ordered him arrested. 

“She tried to kill Arry- Lady Arya,” Gendry said, dropping the sword and raising his hands in surrender. “I had to stop her.”

Arya saw some of the men stringing rope on a tree, preparing to hang him when she interjected. 

“He saved my life!” she shouted, surprised at what he did for her. Arya had hardly spoken to him since her return. She still hadn’t forgiven him for choosing The Brotherhood. But he had risked death itself to protect her name. 

Like him, Jon tried to convince her that she wasn’t a kinslayer, that her mother was not Lady Stoneheart. 

“Arya,” Jon said when he found her, “Lady Stark died at the Red Wedding. She would have wanted to come home, she would have wanted to see you return home. She would not have subjected you to the horrors you describe or wanted to kill innocents for vengeance. If she did, I suppose I would have died much earlier.” He held her close, wrapped her in his furs and smiled encouragingly at her, trying to put on a brave face. She knew her mother had never held any love for him nor him for her. A part of her, the part that often told her the same, wanted to believe him. 

The more rational part though reminded him that he too had died and returned the same. She would be a kinslayer if she killed him. Why would she not when she killed the woman who brought her into the world? Perhaps her mother had always been right in preferring Sansa.

“Would that we had a red priestess to explain such things to us,” he smiled. “I am still me but Lady Stoneheart was not your mother, Arya.” He rubbed a thumb across her cheek. “Lady Stark would have wanted her children safe, they are. Then, she would have wanted rest. You gave her that.” 

_ The gift.  _ Even after years apart they thought the same things. Even if, for entirely different reasons. 

“She loved you, Arya,” he assured her. “Whoever came back was not your mother. Besides,” he added, holding her even closer, warming her, “I don’t suppose she would want her daughter freezing in the cold while she carried her grandchild. Nor would she want her grandchild to be a bastard.” Then more lightheartedly he said, “Granted, she wouldn’t want  _ me  _ to call the child mine but on balance, I think she’d be more worried about another Snow in Winterfell.”

Arya tried to remind him that she was cursed. He only shrugged and said then he supposed he would be cursed too since he wouldn’t leave her. She told him Gendry died because of her but he pointed out the thousands who died during the war reminding her how stubborn he could be when he wanted. 

“You aren’t to blame for all their deaths are you?” he teased her, tapping her nose with his forefinger. “You have to leave some guilt behind for the Others, little sister.”

Then there was the matter of the queen. Queen Daenerys Stormborn was a beautiful woman, one Jon loved. Arya knew as much when the woman came north with her brother. She saw the way the two of them looked at one another. She also knew she and Jon shared a bed during the war. 

“You needn’t worry yourself about that, Arya,” Jon told her. “Let me deal with that.” To this day, Arya had no idea what he did or said to the queen. All she knew was that two days later, they said the words in the godswood of Harrenhal, the place where Jon’s own parents, his true parents, married. A week later, they left for their new settlement to be the Starks of Sea Dragon Point. 

There were whispers of course that he was marrying a girl he knew once as little sister. Some called him names but Jon told her to pay them all no mind. Whenever she expressed any doubts he’d allay each one. 

“If you’ll have me,” he once told her, “there is no one else beside whom I would rather grow old. Was staying together not once our dream?”

_ It was _ , she thought,  _ but not like this.  _ A lifetime was too long to spend without a woman to love the way a man loves a woman. She was just his sister. Growing old with her wouldn’t be the same as growing old with the queen. 

From that day on, they were Jon and Arya Stark. A condition of his abdication was that he would take the Stark name and their children would have no claim on the southron throne.  _ Children,  _ Arya remembered thinking.  _ Jon will never have children of his own because of me.  _

Weddings were supposed to be happy occasions. All she remembered of her sham of a wedding three months ago was that it went by her in a blur. That, and the look on the queen’s face when she saw them leave for the bedding that was no bedding at all. Queen Daenerys had not attended the wedding at all but stood on her balcony watching them as they went past. Sometimes, when Arya thought of the look on her face, she thought it would be better for her to die once she had the baby she carried. Jon only married her for it. Perhaps Sansa could look after the child. Whatever crimes Arya had committed, her sister would not take it out on an innocent child. Jon could marry the woman he truly wanted then, not the stupid sister whose honour he tried to protect. She was the one who laid with Gendry but it was Jon who truly carried the burden. 

Whenever those thoughts came to her though, she thought of Gendry and of the mother he scarcely remembered, the father he never knew, and his lifelong desire to have a family. She owed it to him to raise the child she carried, the child they hadn’t planned nor knew about. He had always been worried about having a bastard and was reticent about their...relations. 

“You’re a princess,” he’d always say. “I shouldn’t be doing this. They’ll geld me for it.” It’s why he always spilled outside her, except the one time he didn’t. 

But Arya knew no reason, she only wanted to keep him close. He was the only person who knew what she truly was and stayed around anyway. She cared deeply for him, he was her pack. He’d proven it when it mattered most and he made her feel safe, wanted, loved. She hadn’t felt that way in a long time. Everyone else wanted the Arya she was when she left Winterfell. Gendry knew her as she was and wanted her anyway. 

Jon professed the same. He’d proven the words she always told herself.  _ Jon will want me, even if no one else does.  _ But at what cost? His own happiness for sure. The woman he loved, definitely. What did he get in return? Arya Horseface for a wife that was no wife at all. They slept in the same bed at her insistence but did not lie together. It started on the road from Harrenhal and continued once they built their cabin.

“You needn’t worry about me, little sister,” he said on that first night on the road. “I’ll find a tent to sleep in. This is yours. I only wanted to make sure you were alright.” She was lying down, having vomited out everything that passed her throat. Jon lay beside her for a while. Arya rested her head against his chest. Even when they were children it was her favourite pillow and after Lady Stoneheart, feeling his warmth and hearing his steady heartbeat reminded her he was here and still Jon. 

“Stay here,” she told him. So he returned every night to give her the same comfort even if they would never lay together as man and wife. 

She knew Jon. He would not go to another woman, not when he was lord now and certainly not when he was married, even if it was no true marriage. She didn’t think it a fair bargain at all. She’d heard about the woman he had for a paramour before, a famous wildling spearwife, as dangerous as she was eye-catching. She didn’t need anyone to tell her about the dragon queen. She’d seen  _ her _ for herself. Men had needs she learnt over the years and Jon was depriving himself of relief because of her. 

So she tried to feign smiles. Seeing her smile seemed to make him truly happy so she played the mummer’s part of a companion who found happiness with him. It was not too hard a task. Being with Jon always did comfort her. The least she could do was give him some of the same. After all, it had once been the thing she wanted more than everything else - to be reunited with Jon. Living with him was beyond her dreams. It was the circumstances that made it feel wrong. 

Arya wrapped her fingers around the handle of the cast-iron pot on the hearth and lifted it. The stew was ready. Salmon stew again with rye bread. 

Her uncle, Edmure, had gifted them five heifers and a bull. While they were grateful for the gift, they could not eat them just yet, not until they had calved so they had plenty of milk and cheese but lived off what the sea offered them for meat. 

Arya fell asleep on the straw mattress they shared when she got too tired waiting. Sleep is all she seemed to do these days. She woke to Jon shouting “I have a surprise!” from the door where he was taking his boots off. He marched across to the bed and lifted her once he’d put his slippers on. A smile beamed across his face. 

“No more sleeping on a straw bed,” he said, putting her down to her feet. “We now have a featherbed.” 

Arya looked back at the door to see Dryn and Longspear Ryk bringing the feather mattress in. When they left, “So?” he asked as she sat on it. 

“In this state,” she put a hand on her rounding belly, “ I could sleep anywhere.”  _ Next to you  _ went unsaid. He’d given up so much for her. A straw mattress was hardly an encumbrance. She stretched herself out on it, and swooned, raising her arms above her head like Nymeria when she wanted to be scratched. Jon knelt beside her and placed his hand over her rounding belly. He whispered something she couldn’t hear. He did that sometimes and it made her heart burn. Gendry would never get to do that. She hadn’t known that she was with child until after he died. 

Even with that, if there was anyone Arya would rather have with her, it was Jon. Yet like this, it just felt wrong. 

“We should eat,” she said, pushing herself up and brushing the tangles from her face. Jon’s eyes seemed to burn into her when she moved into him, a hair-breadth away, as she got up. They stayed like that for a moment. Arya’s cheeks burned. The room felt hot. 

“Salmon again?” he asked. 

She nodded. It was the only thing they had readily available. Munda had gone fishing earlier that morning. 

“Good,” he said, tugging her even closer. “I like salmon.” He then moved down, pressing his cheek to her stomach. “I hope you like it too, little wolf.”

Their table only had two chairs for the two of them. Larger dinners were had in the long hall in the middle of the settlement. Jon liked to say that they’d have a castle of their own with a long table and a solar when the little wolf was old enough to sit at a table. For now, this suited them. Arya thought so too. He looked relieved when they were alone. Outside, he was the lord of burgeoning lands. He had to maintain peace between free folk, northman, and riverlord, see to their needs and oversee the development of a small town and its keep. But inside, he did more of the talking about the most trivial of matters but Arya found she could listen all day long. Sometimes they even played games like they did as children and ended up on the bed where he would tickle her breathless.

On other nights, he’d hold her hand in their bed and tell her about the years they spent apart. She did the same. She even told him about the House of Black and White. He only held her closer and said that she would never need to do anything of the sort again. Sometimes she thought he was so kind to her that any day now something would go wrong. No one could truly love her such. Not even Jon who loved her more than anyone else had in her life . 

Arya felt the fluttering in her belly. Sometimes, like now, it felt like tiny butterflies in her stomach, the type she’d get whenever she saw Gendry in the forge. Other times though she felt distinct movement when she placed a hand on her belly. Munda said the babe was learning how to twist and turn in her womb and that’s what she was feeling. 

“What’s wrong?” Jon asked, half getting up. The look on his face grew ever so serious. 

“Come here,” she told him, giggling. Arya placed his hand on the side of her stomach. The babe kicked and Jon looked stupefied. He stared at her stomach and then looked up at her. A tear dribbled from his eye. “Arya,” he said wondrously and kissed her belly. 

Her stomach seemed to do a somersault. This time she was sure it was not the babe. 

  
  
  
  



	3. Chapter 3

Jon sat on the dais of the long hall looking down at the people of his land. So much had changed since they settled in their new home. Jon had worn many names. Snow, Lord Commander, King, Prince, Targaryen, and finally his lifelong dream, Stark. Munda and Longspear Ryk’s twins could sit up now, every family had at least a lean-to-shelter to give them privacy, new arrivals came daily and Tormund’s youngest, the boy Jon once took for a page, had stolen a girl for himself. They were throwing the newly weds a grand feast. Now that spring was here the cows had calved and they had new ewes on the farm they could afford to do so.

Arya looked his way. Jon quickly averted his eyes so she wouldn’t notice him staring at her. Being with child had changed her body in ways that took Jon’s mind to places it shouldn’t. She was his little sister. Once, they used to swim naked in the hot pools of their home as children and he’d known every part of her skinny body. Now, when she lay abed next to him in a linen shift that hid no curve at all, Jon felt a stirring in his loins. He’d tell himself it was because he had not lain with a woman in a long time. Yet when he took himself in hand it was images of her that came to his mind. He lost himself looking at the perfect bow of lips he wanted to taste - lips that had grown fuller with the babe. Sharing a bed with her grew ever harder. For all that they had a big bed, Arya always burrowed herself so close to him that he could feel her warm breath on his chest all while her bosom rose and fell with every inhale against his side. Her leg found rest between his. And that was only when she didn’t wrap his arms around her belly lying back to chest. His hands grazed the chest he ached to touch then. So soft her breasts were, so full. His burnt fingers ached to touch them. They made it that much harder for him to reconcile the woman in his bed, his wife even if only on paper, and the skinny girl, all elbows and knees, he once knew as sister. When they slept like that, she rubbed against him in her sleep in a way that made seed leak into his shirt more than once. He’d clench his buttocks then, grind his teeth, and think of every unsavoury thing to avoid spilling like a green boy. 

When he took himself in hand though, he let his mind run free. For the few moments he chased his peak, for the few moments before the guilt struck him hard in the chest, he imagined her breaths coming in sharp whimpers as she straddled him, taking him deep inside her, telling him what she wanted. He’d start slow most nights with soft kisses and declarations of love. He’d show her pleasure. First with his fingers and then with his tongue until she was writhing and crying with every rapture, swollen with need of him. Some nights he could even swear he could smell her arousal. Only then, when he’d made her soar with the birds and shatter in bliss would he take her. Slowly at first, telling her how he needed her more than air itself, before he lost himself in her heat, thrusting wildly like a wolf in a rut.

Across the room, Arya flashed him a smile. Her teeth sparkled in the torchlight. She smiled more these days. Nothing made him happier. 

“No wonder you spilled your bairn into her belly so quick. You look like you want to rut her in full view of us all.” Jon turned to see Longspear Ryk grinning at him. “The last time you looked at a woman like that, you and Ygritte were fucking under the furs.”

Jon narrowed his eyes at him. 

“What?” Ryk challenged. “You think no one knew just _how_ you kept warm?” 

Jon turned back his eyes to Arya who was now speaking to the new couple. She laid a protective hand over her swollen belly. _Gendry’s babe._ The child of the man she lay with. The man she loved. The guilt came as ice and in his veins, dousing the fire thoughts of her brought about in him. Theirs was no true marriage. It would never be. He knew that when he proposed this arrangement. He was her brother...or at least once was. Arya trusted him with herself and her babe because of it. And here he was, letting his base desires run away with him. He needed to do better. 

“Why do you look so broody,” she asked him, taking a swig of his hot cider. She could always sneak up on him without a sound, courtesy of the assassins in Braavos. 

“Nothing.” He smiled. Her eyes swimmed with mischief. “Having fun?”

“Yes,” she laughed. “Strangely.” She chewed on her lip. “But I’d like to go home now.”

Jon kissed her brow. He’d do anything to keep her smiling like that. It made it all worth it when she smiled especially after all she’d been through. 

The walk from the long hall to their cabin was not very long. In between, Jon looked at the holdfast that grew taller everyday. He’d hoped to have it ready for when the babe was born but Arya grew so big now that he didn’t think they’d have it ready. Now he endeavoured to have it ready for the babe’s first nameday. He could take longer with it then. Make it a proper keep for his little family. 

“Dryn told me how he stole Geollie,”Arya said. “ She broke his nose did you know?”

“I thought you’d approve,” he told her. 

She scrunched her nose at him. “I suppose it’s less dull than courtship with all its rules and the eyes of everyone else. You would know that better than me though,” she grinned. “You stole Ygritte.”

“I didn’t!”

“That’s not what Munda says. She says Ygritte was your spearwife, that you stole her for yourself and that the two of you coupled whenever you could.”

Jon felt his ears burn with how freely she spoke of the joining between man and woman. 

“It was all so long ago,” he grunted. 

“And the queen?” she asked. “How did you court her?”

“You know most men do not speak of former lovers to their wives?”

“Most men do not marry their sister to protect her virtue.”

“You aren’t my sister, Arya. If you were they wouldn’t let us marry.”

“The point still stands.” She jutted her chin up at him defiantly. “How did you court the queen?”

“I didn’t.”

“Then how did you...she slept in your tent. Everyone knows that.”

“Arya…”

“Do you miss her?”

Sometimes he did, but the yearning lessened with everyday. 

“I’m sorry,” she said, squeezing his hand. “Do you regret this?”

Jon opened his mouth but she continued on before he could say a thing. 

“You have already done more than enough, Jon. You have given the babe a name. You have protected my name when you didn’t have to. If the queen would have you… you would have my blessing. You could even tell her that we aren’t truly married-“

“Arya,” he growled, tightening his hold on her hand.

“Enough.”

“It’s not,” she said, stubborn as a bull. “You’ll grow to hate me if you continue to deny yourself such.” 

“I will never hate you. Ever. I am happy with our life.”

“Fine,” she continued as if she heard nothing he said. “You can find a woman closer to here. Lords have mistresses all the time.”

“Arya-“

“Don’t you want children of your own?”

He wanted that more than anything... _anything but Arya_. “I will not have a bastard.”

“Bran could legitimise it. A child of your loins would be your heir then.”

“I already have an heir.”

She rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.”

Jon stopped and turned to her. “I will not lie with another woman. I am the Lord of Sea Dragon Point.”

“Father was Lord of Winterfell-“

“He didn’t have a bastard. Not for true. He did what he did for my mother. Just as I am for you and the little one.”

“You will spend the rest of your life as a septon?”

“I don’t believe in the Seven,” he grinned. 

She punched him in the chest. Jon grabbed a hold of her hand and splayed it against his chest. His other hand took a hold of her waist, holding her flush against him. Well...as close as her belly allowed. 

The look in her eyes changed. She appraised him for a long while. Grey eyes searched his face. Scarlet spots brightened on her cheeks against the moonlight. Their cabin was only a few steps away. Her chest moved with quickening breaths. Jon dipped his head and closed the gap between them. 

Arya stiffened in his hold, long enough for reason to dawn back on him. She didn’t want this. He’d ruined what they had. 

He recoiled from her as if burnt. “Arya...I’m so sorry.”

Arya pulled him down to her. She combed her fingers through his hair and kissed him with a moan, brushing her velvet tongue across his lips. 

In turn, he kneaded his fingers across her spine. She yielded to him, melting further into him. Her mouth opened long enough for him to slip inside and taste her. This was better than his dreams. She was so warm, so pliant. Then, as only Arya would the moment he thought her tractable, she slipped her hands around his waist and kneaded her own fingers in the muscles in his back with a growl.

Her breasts plied against his chest. So soft, begging to be touched...to be released from their stays. Jon felt himself harden. With another swirl of her tongue, another grope of the hands that pulled him to her centre, he might just spill. Could just a kiss do this to a man? Jon moved a hand to the flesh he’d ached for months to touch. He did. Arya threw her head back with a fevered mewl. He would do anything to hear that sound again. So he caressed them, cupped them, began to tease at the nipples hidden under her stays. She arched into his touch. It wasn’t enough. Too many layers separated him from the object of his desire. If only he could strip her bare. Their cabin was not too far. He could. She would let him. She was kissing him again after all. Did she want him as he did her? Her exploring tongue seemed to suggest so, as did the tight hold she had on him and the noises she made. The ones that he could die for. 

Jon’s lips trailed downwards, past her slender neck, his hand slipped to the back of her bodice and found the bow. With a tug, the laces released as her gown slackened. A hard pearl on a chest that moved with stuttered breaths greeted him. 

“Jon,” she said breathlessly. 

He only pushed her against the weirwood tree in front of their home. The one they had taken for a heart tree. It was surrounded by the weirwood circles of the children of the forest. He found he couldn’t wait to take the mere steps it took to the stairs in front of their tiny shelter. 

“Let me taste you,” he whispered against her silken flesh. “Please.”

A sharp sound caught in the back of her throat. She pulled him into her. His answer.

Jon felt his knees tremble when he took the tip in his mouth. Gooseflesh prickled up her breasts. 

Arya whimpered and arched into him. She cradled his head in her hands. _Not a dream then._ He groaned with that. He was sure seed was leaking from him again. It had been seven months since he had last touched a woman like this. Seven months since they married. But this was not just a woman. This was Arya. His heart. 

Jon twisted them and moved down. He sat himself under the tree, hidden from view and pulled her down on top of him. He held himself against her. So many layers of skirts separated them but he could still feel the heat steaming from her. He needed to sink into those depths. He needed it more than anything. 

Arya met his moves with whorls of her hips, small gasps catching in her throat. Then she surprised him by unclasping his cloak and unlacing his shirt all while she moved so sweetly against him. Jon was burning. Her fingers brushed against his now bare chest. Then she slid down his chest with her own lips. Just as he had done to her, trailing kisses down it until she came to _his_ nipple. He felt his own nipple harden with just a kiss from her. Then, just as he had done to her, she took the bud into her mouth and sucked. 

Jon groaned.

“It feels good then?” she asked. 

“More than good.” He lifted her head back up for a claiming kiss. Arya picked up the pace with which she rubbed against him then, chasing her elusive peak until she shattered against him with a cry that made him follow her. He silenced its last remnants with his lips. He once dreamt of loving Ygritte beneath the heart tree. This was even better. He was here with his wife...his heart. Arya.

When they withdrew for a breath. Arya looked bashful - hard to imagine given what she was doing to him moments before. She bit her lip the way she did when she was scared. “And if you had a trueborn heir?” she asked. 

“I do,” he said, raising a trembling hand to her midriff. Was she asking him what he thought she was? “You carry my trueborn heir.” 

“Well,” she said. “I suppose every child deserves siblings. Now...” She took a hold of his hand as she stood. “Let’s go home.”

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like Winter Suns needs my full brain power and something happens to me when I’m on holiday, my brain all but forgets how to speak English (it’s not my first language). And I feel like I need to fully concentrate for the next chapter in that story.
> 
> Right now, I only have enough brain power for something as unstructured as this lol. I have no idea where this story is going...well, that’s not true, I have a vague idea of Jon & Arya forging a life alone...together. I just need to colour that outline in. Do not expect something great, as I said, my brain is operating at reduced capacity lol. 
> 
> Where would they go to be alone? What are things you’d like to see in the remaining 3/4 chapters? I’ll try to deliver but the less secondary characters the better lol. I am writing this story on my phone.


End file.
